


Hearts Burn Quick

by typical_art_dork



Series: get in the car, loser, we're healing from trauma [3]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Dance parties, Dustin and Lucas are the token straights, F/F, I forgot about Suzie while writing this so Dustin's single for the sake of the last scene, Internalized Homophobia, Lesbian Nancy Wheeler, Lesbian Robin Buckley, M/M, Panic Attacks, Platonic Cuddling, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Ronance, Sleepovers, The Outsiders, Their ship name is so cute heteros die mad about it, drive-in movies, they're in love because i said so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:08:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25490638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/typical_art_dork/pseuds/typical_art_dork
Summary: She gets like this sometimes-- nervous around Robin in a way she’d never been around Steve or even Jonathan. Nancy thinks maybe she was never really in love with either of them.It was too Blockbuster-film perfect, too dramatic to be real.But at least with them, she knew how she was supposed to act. She doesn't know how to act around Robin.OR: Nancy comes to terms with herself, confesses her love to a whirlwind of a girl, and everything clicks into place at the end.
Relationships: Eleven | Jane Hopper/Maxine "Max" Mayfield, Jonathan Byers & Nancy Wheeler, Robin Buckley & Nancy Wheeler, Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington, Robin Buckley/Nancy Wheeler, Steve Harrington & The Party, Steve Harrington/Jonathan Byers, Will Byers/Mike Wheeler
Series: get in the car, loser, we're healing from trauma [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1728592
Comments: 26
Kudos: 200





	Hearts Burn Quick

**Author's Note:**

> Ronance warriors rise the HELL up!!!
> 
> This one was a doozy, folks. If you want a soundtrack, the playlist is called "Hearts Burn Quick" on Spotify. Settle in, have a snack, and get ready for a sapphic feels-fest.

DECEMBER

“No, no, you’re doing it wrong.”

Beside Robin, Steve huffs, letting the strands of her hair he’s twisted together in a semi-braid fall limply back as she bats his hand away. Jonathan stifles a laugh, and the sight of it makes Nancy’s lips quirk into a smile. 

They’re all splayed out on her bedroom floor, sharing the pizza Jonathan ordered when Steve and Robin first arrived at the Wheelers’ house with Dustin, Max, Lucas, Will, and El all crammed like sardines into the backseat. They’d scrambled out of Steve’s car like little kids, even though they’re freshmen in high school now, and Steve had laughed and cranked up the radio (it was crowing some Talking Heads song, Nancy thinks) as Mike pushed past her outside to meet the rest of his little group in the driveway. 

Nancy can’t pin down exactly when Steve and Robin started staying over at her house.

Maybe a week or so after they’d started carpooling with Jonathan when he carted Will and the others over to her place for movie night with Mike, she’d insisted that they stay for dinner and a movie of their choice. It was going to storm  
later, and she didn’t want them driving home through lighting. 

But then she kept offering. Nancy didn’t know why, at the time-- Robin was still this whirlwind of a girl she didn’t fully understand, and sometimes the sight of Steve still tugged up bittersweet memories-- but she kept suggesting they stay over, week after week. They’d all huddle up on the couch and watch TV or a tape Steve brought with him from Family Video, laughing about shit they all remembered from high school as the kids got progressively louder a floor below them. Or they’d all parade upstairs to Nancy’s room and take turns picking out records to play and arguing over the answers to Robin’s AP Lit homework, chucking potato chips at Steve. Or they’d all cram together in the kitchen and bake something for the kids-- chocolate-chip cookies, brownies, gingerbread. 

The routine was easy-- uncomplicated. It evolved into a comfortable friendship, the kind without any secrets. When Steve and Jonathan finally started dating, Nancy was the first to know after Robin. Looking at the two of them now, she can’t say she’s surprised-- Jonathan’s got an arm slung around Steve, who’s glaring at Robin with faux offense, leaning into Jonathan like they’re glued together at the hip. Robin just glowers back at him as she fails to de-tangle the mess of hair he had been trying to braid. 

All she’s done so far is tug even more knots into it, though. 

Steve finally cracks, his glare falling away as he smiles and lets his head fall back onto Jonathan’s shoulder, eyes sparkling in the lamplight as Robin rolls her eyes and Jonathan huffs out his soft little laugh again, all bright-eyed and glowy despite the dim lighting. 

They look happy.

Sometimes, Nancy feels like there’s a sheet of glass between her and the rest of the world. Like she’s a passenger in her own body, a silent observer. Her throat closes up, and her eyes go unfocused, like she’s shutting down. She knows it has something to do with the trauma-- Pandora’s Box, she calls it-- but sometimes she thinks it might be something that’s uniquely wrong with her, like a defect. She looks back on her childhood and remembers always feeling vaguely disconnected from her family, her friends. Her mom would ask her about the boys in her classes back when she was in middle school, when all her friends had crushes and she didn’t. Back then, all the boys looked the same to her. Equally unappealing. She’d let her gaze wander to her lap, and she’d lie about liking Tommy R. or Aaron from history class, and her mom would smile like she was proud, and Nancy would feel the glass sheet fall in between them, unwavering. 

She doesn’t feel like a silent observer now, though, because Robin sighs defeatedly and crawls across the carpet to plant herself in front of Nancy. 

“Fix this, Nance.”

Nancy smiles, laughing a little as Robin widens her eyes pointedly at her, like, ‘go ahead’, and carefully separates the strands of hair Steve’s royally fucked up. They’ve been trying to teach him to braid since December, when El had complained that Nancy never had time to fix her hair for her anymore. In Nancy’s defense, college is a bitch and she’d been running on maybe three hours of sleep per night back then, but she still took it to heart. Robin had commented that they could just teach Steve how to braid since he always has time on his hands these days. They figured he’d pick it up easily, since he’s a “hair expert”, as Dustin put it. Nancy still remembers the pride on the kid’s face, all shining eyes and goofy grin. 

Steve is a slow learner when it comes to braiding, though, as it turns out. And he’s got less time on his hands, too, what with spring approaching and college applications hanging over his head. Robin convinced him, one rainy afternoon at the Byers’, to major in child psychology at the community college downtown. Nancy still remembers that day-- she’d been over with Jonathan and the kids, and they’d made hot cocoa to celebrate when Steve had agreed. Dustin had bounced around the living room, babbling about how Steve would finally be able to diagnose everyone, because they were all probably extremely fucked up after the Upside Down, and Robin had chucked a pillow at the kid to shut him up while Steve threw his head back and declared that he didn’t need a degree to know all the kids were clinically insane. 

That was a good day. It’s one of the ones Jonathan reminds her of when she’s freaking out about midterms or her calculus grade or any of the bullshit that they had to endure in high school. 

When Nancy’s finally disentangled Robin’s hair, she catches Jonathan’s eye over Robin’s shoulder. He’s got this weird suggestive look on his face, all sly smugness like he knows something she doesn’t. Which is really rich, by the way, because Nancy picks up on everything, thank you very much. She prides herself on being able to read people and situations, and right now, everything seems normal. Sure, she’s still got her hand in Robin’s hair, but there’s nothing inherently weird about that. She’s done her friends’ hair at sleepovers before, and this is no different. 

Steve coughs suddenly, breaking Nancy out of her thoughts. He’s got his eyebrows ticked up at her, and Nancy realizes that this actually might be weird, because Robin’s giggling as Jonathan sighs into Steve’s shoulder like he’s embarrassed. Second-hand embarrassment, Nancy realizes, and then she remembers that she’s still got her hand on Robin’s head. She’s kind of petting her, and the sight makes her jerk back, Robin laughing all the while. Steve rolls his eyes at all of them like the asshole he is. 

“Zoned out there, Nance?” He asks her, and Nancy forces an embarrassed laugh and shakes her head at herself. 

“Yeah, Jesus, sorry,” she manages, and Robin pats her shoulder consolingly. 

“It’s okay, weirdo,” she says, and the fondness in her voice makes Nancy’s heart do a little somersault in her chest. 

She gets like this sometimes-- nervous around Robin in a way she’d never been around Steve or even Jonathan. Dating them was easy, in the way that she always knew how she was supposed to act. It was like reading from a script, like playing a role. Nancy guesses that’s why neither relationship really worked, apart from the crippling survivor’s guilt she had at the beginning of junior year and the stress of college slowly severing her bond with Jonathan. Underneath the easy smiles and movie dates with Steve and the whirlpool of emotion she felt with Jonathan by her side, Nancy thinks maybe she was never really in love with either of them. She looks back on her past self and sees a girl playing a part. A performer. First the girl next door falling for the high-school heartthrob, adorably cliche, then the badass protagonist of a sci-fi movie with a mysterious, attractive loner as her love interest. 

It was too Blockbuster-film perfect, too dramatic to be real. 

But at least with them, she knew how she was supposed to act. 

With Robin. . . things can get weird sometimes. She knows Robin likes girls, that she’s unapologetic about it, and Nancy’s fine with that, just like she’s fine with Jonathan and Steve, but sometimes she finds her pulse quickening when Robin crowds into her space, and it’s not the same as when she’d feel her heart flutter at the sight of Steve or Jonathan. It’s charged, and the air seems to swim with something heavy and Nancy feels herself stiffen and recoil reflexively. She’d confided in Jonathan about it weeks ago, after a mortifying incident in which Robin had gone to fix the collar of Nancy’s button-down and she’d nearly jumped a foot in the air, like Robin had burned her or something. 

Jonathan had laughed when Nancy pulled him into the privacy of her room that night and whisper-screamed at him to slap some sense into her, that she was afraid she was seeing Robin as predatory and she knew logically that that was wrong, because Robin was kind beneath her dark clothing and sarcasm, and she’d never do anything to hurt anyone. 

“Nancy,” he’d said, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder as Steve and Robin’s gleeful voices drifted in from the Wheelers’ kitchen, “you’re not afraid of her. I think you might have a crush.”

Nancy had scoffed at him and flounced out of the room, because that was ridiculous. 

She knows what crushes feel like. They’re simple, uncomplicated-- she knows how to navigate them, what to say and do. This thing with Robin-- the nervousness-- isn’t puppy love or infatuation or a school-girl crush. She admires the other girl, sure, because she’s pretty in her own way and doesn’t take shit from anyone, but Nancy knows what love feels like. It’s an equation that comes easily to her, as simple and effortless as breathing. Even with Jonathan, who she’d been unsure about at first, things were black and white: he liked her and she felt safe with him. All they had to do to get rid of the tension was close the distance. 

But now, as she feels her face heat up and Steve shakes his head at her like he knows exactly what she’s thinking, Nancy worries that Jonathan might not be too far off from the truth. 

“So,” Robin says eventually, after Steve’s stopped looking at Nancy with that all-knowing smirk and Jonathan’s lifted his head from Steve’s shoulder, “what movie are we watching tonight? I smuggled in that tape from the back room, Steve, the one about Freddy Kreuger?”

“Yes!” Steve exclaims, jumping up from his place on the floor and pulling Jonathan to his feet. They lace their fingers together automatically, and Nancy tries to remember if she’d ever done that with either of them, had that wordless, charged connection. 

“Nightmare on Elm Street is a classic, Rob,” Steve’s saying as he jerks Robin into a standing position and stumbles back when she gets to her feet. She laughs when he loses his footing, and Nancy feels that bizarre stirring in her chest again. She ignores it in favor of hopping up and leading the way downstairs. 

The house is all dark in the hallway because all the kids are huddled in the basement and have no need for light upstairs, and Nancy flicks on each overhead light as she heads to the kitchen, Steve and Jonathan and Robin close behind. There’s something about the blue-tinged darkness of this hour that makes her heart race, even though the Upside Down is in the past, gone with Barb and Bob Newby and Billy Hargrove. The thought makes Nancy shiver as she shoves a bag of popcorn into the microwave. 

It hums to life as Steve and Jonathan set up the movie in the living room.

She can hear the kids arguing in the basement, because despite the size of her house, the walls are thin, and the kids are always loud as hell when they’re in the same room for more than twenty minutes. Right now, Mike and Max are bickering over what movie to watch next, and Nancy smiles to herself when El declares she and Will should get to choose since they’ve been the nicest throughout the night.

She loves her brother and his weird little friends now, even though El rummages through her makeup all the time and Dustin always makes that weird purring noise with his teeth by way of greeting. They’ve been through the ringer, all of them, probably more so than Nancy has. They deserve to still be kids, even though they’re taking AP classes now and went to homecoming in October and they’ll all be struggling through finals later in the spring. 

“So,” Robin says from behind her, making Nancy jump about a damn foot in the air, “have you ever seen this movie before?”

She waves the tape case wordlessly in front of Nancy’s face. It’s adorned with a picture of a child in bed, wide eyes bright with fear as a hand made of what looks like metal hovers over their head. The sight makes Nancy want to laugh a little, because after everything, she can’t really take many horror movies seriously. The idea that this is the kind of thing that scares people-- it’s half-exasperating and half-hilarious. She thinks back to her middle school self, the girl that was terrified of spiders and heights and movies like this, and she wants to throw her head back and cackle the way Robin does whenever Steve and Dustin get into a particularly heated argument. 

“Nope,” Nancy tells her, “but it looks. . . truly terrifying.”

“Oh, totally,” Robin replies, all faux-seriousness. “Evil Russians got nothing on this creep with hands made out of knives, right?”

She shakes the case for emphasis, widening her eyes like Steve does when he tells the kids ghost stories on the impromptu camping trips he sometimes drags them on. Even after all the bizarre shit that’s gone down in the woods of Hawkins, the kids and Steve still find ways to make them matter for all the right reasons. 

Nancy giggles, then stops herself from laughing too hard because now she’s facing Robin and they’re way closer than she originally thought and thank God for the microwave because it lets out this obnoxious, shrill buzz and shuts her up. 

She pivots on her heel and busies herself with extracting the popcorn bag as quickly as possible because holy shit it’s hot, and Robin kind of looks at her with this weirdly calculating expression before she bounces into the living room, endlessly energetic. Nancy doesn’t understand how she’s always this hyper, thinks maybe she doesn’t want to know. Steve’s made comments about a caffeine addiction, but Nancy thinks it might just be the way Robin’s wired. Her eyes are always bright, even when she’s drained. 

When Nancy ambles into the dimly-lit living room, popcorn bowl in her hands, Steve and Jonathan are already huddled together on the couch. They’re melded together, Jonathan’s arm around Steve’s shoulders and Steve’s around his. They’ve stolen a yellow knitted blanket from the basket by the TV and draped it around themselves, and they look like one mass in the sweeping shadows of the living room. Robin, who’s got the movie ready to go, bounds over to the couch and sprawls out on it, letting her head fall onto Steve’s shoulder. He presses a little kiss to her hair, and Jonathan does the same to Steve, making them both smile. Nancy sets the popcorn on the coffee table and feels her heart speed up. 

It’s not that she’s jealous-- because she’s not, really. Steve and Jonathan work well together, and she’s happy for them. She knows now that Jonathan is too similar to her for them to really click, anyway. They’re both just too serious, too quiet and closed-off and grim. Jonathan needs someone light, someone who can roll with the punches Hawkins rains down on them when shit gets real. And Steve needs someone like Jonathan, someone to pull him back down to reality when he gets carried away. They fit together. They work. 

So no, Nancy’s not jealous. Not of Steve and Jonathan. But still, this faint envious feeling slithers into her stomach and pools there when Robin tucks herself closer to Steve, nuzzles her head into the material of his sweatshirt. It’s not romantic, Nancy knows, but it still stirs something up in her, a murmur of unrest, a twisting vine of envy. 

“Nance, c’mon, sit down,” Robin says suddenly, patting the empty place beside her on the couch. Nancy shakes herself out of her head and scampers over, falling into the cushions and blankets as Nightmare on Elm Street starts. 

As the opening credits roll and the music starts up, blaring into the static hush that’s fallen over the room, Robin shifts away from Steve and tugs Nancy into her side, all shining eyes and messy hair, and holy shit, maybe Jonathan was right. 

All Nancy can focus on throughout the movie is the warm line of Robin’s arm around her shoulders, the tickle of her hair on Nancy’s neck, the press of her side to Nancy’s, and it’s making her heart flutter traitorously in her chest. She can hear Steve and Jonathan whispering to each other distantly, as if she’s behind a door and they’re on the other side. They’re both the chatty type during films, she remembers, because Jonathan’s a smartass who loves to point out inconsistencies, and Steve just likes to imitate the characters in bad accents and make jokes about their clothes every now and then. She can smell Robin’s perfume. It’s something with jasmine in it, a flowery scent that makes her dizzy. 

“Hey,” Robin whispers, poking her. 

Nancy flicks her eyes to the side, fixing Robin with what she hopes is a casual glance.

“This movie not your thing?”

Nancy huffs out a quiet laugh. “How could you tell?”

Beside them, Jonathan swats at Steve and mutters at him to shut up. Robin grins. 

“You haven’t been paying attention this whole time, dork. You’ve just been staring at the popcorn bowl.”

Damn it. Nancy knew she was zoning out, but she didn’t think Robin would have noticed. 

“Yeah, sorry. . . I’m not really into horror movies, I guess. After. . . everything. . . they just seem kind of stupid.”

Robin tilts her head to one side, like she’s considering Nancy’s confession, and then she nods decisively. “Yeah, okay, we’re doing something else.”

Before Nancy can protest, Robin’s grabbing her by the wrist and pulling her to her feet, waving dismissively at Steve when he looks at her all weird. He already looks exhausted-- Nancy worries that the kids tire him out sometimes. He really is good with them, she knows, but every now and then they can be a little much. Steve’s got dark circles under his eyes again tonight, all gaunt-looking in the lamplight, and Nancy gets the sudden urge to smooth away the lines of stress on his face. She tamps it down and turns back towards Robin, who’s pulling her into the kitchen as Jonathan folds an arm around Steve and tugs him against his side again. 

When Nancy’s feet hit the kitchen tile, Robin hops up onto the counter by the sink and pats the open spot beside her. 

“C’mon, Wheeler, get your ass up here.”

“What? Why?” Nancy asks, kind of annoyed that Robin’s just planted herself on her counter in her house and looks like THAT, effortlessly pretty even in shitty lighting with messy hair and smudged makeup under her eyes. Damn, she needs to get a grip. 

“Because,” Robin says simply, “it’s more fun than sitting in a chair. Now get up here, we’re gonna have an old-fashioned conversation!”

Nancy rolls her eyes, but complies, because Robin’s comfortable now, anyway, leaning her head back against the cabinets above the counter and letting her feet dangle in the air, kicking her heels lightly. 

Nancy, for the record, is not comfortable. 

“So,” Robin says, snickering a little when Steve yelps at a jumpscare from inside the living room, “what’s the deal with you tonight? You’ve been somewhere else the whole time.”

Nancy scoffs. It’s just her luck that Robin picked up on it. She’s just as intuitive as Steve; they’re experts at reading people, and it’s kind of terrifying sometimes. Right now it’s just exasperating. 

“I don’t know,” Nancy lies. “Really, it’s fine, we can go back in there and watch the movie-- I’m sure Steve needs the extra emotional support right now.”

This earns a small smile from Robin, thank God, but instead of hopping down from the counter she just leans closer into Nancy’s space, her eyes focused and assessing. Nancy shifts, picks at a cuticle. 

“Nancy. I know you’re acting weird, you know you’re acting weird. Just. . . I’m here for you, okay? I want to be here for you. Just tell me what’s going on.”

One of the perks of dealing with the Upside Down when your parents and your school friends don’t know shit about it is that you get really good at lying. Nancy was always okay at spinning a little fib every now and then, but she didn’t fully master the art of lying through her teeth until her best friend went missing and her brother met a girl who could flip cars into the air and Jonathan lured a monster into his living room. Her mother asked her where her jacket had gone, the week after the first shitshow went down. 

‘The one with the fur on the collar,’ Nancy remembers her mother saying, hands on her hips like the jacket hadn’t been thirty dollars of Nancy’s own money-- like it mattered, anyway. She’d thrown the jacket away. Chucked it in the back of the dumpster behind the diner downtown, because she’d gotten blood on it and it smelled like gasoline and rotting monster flesh, and she didn’t know if detergent could cure that. She figured her mom wouldn’t notice, but she had. Nancy remembers pausing in the hallway, meeting her mother’s eyes, forcing an embarrassed grimace. ‘Steve spilled coffee on it last Monday. I had to throw it out.’

Now, under the dim overhead lights of the kitchen, with Robin’s blue eyes fixed on her, Nancy lifts her head and stares right back. 

“I’m just tired. I’m having nightmares again. It’s not a huge deal, it’s just been kind of shitty since we’re on break. I just wanted to get some proper sleep for a change, y’know?”

Robin nods, buying it. To be fair, it isn’t a complete lie. Nancy has been having nightmares, but that’s nothing new. It’s not why she’s spent half the night staring at the coffee table, trying not to slump against Robin and breathe in her jasmine perfume and press a kiss to her shoulder like Steve did to Jonathan earlier. Not that Nancy had really even wanted to do that-- it had crossed her mind for a brief second, sure, because she hasn’t dated anyone since Jonathan and Robin was right next to her on the couch, but-- damn it. Nancy needs to get a goddamn grip on herself.

“Nance,” Robin’s saying, worry bleeding into her tone, sharp and panicked, “hey, are you okay?”

She snaps her fingers in front of Nancy’s face, which is kind of an asshole move, and Nancy flinches and turns to face her again. 

“Shit, sorry. What’d you say?”

Robin sighs, her eyes going soft, and Nancy feels something like heartache settle in her chest. 

“I said, you should try to get some sleep around other people. I always sleep better when Steve’s in the room. Or Joyce, or Jonathan. Do you and Mike ever talk before bed?”

“What?” Nancy says, because Robin’s met Mike. He’s not the touchy-feely, heart-to-heart type. “No, we don’t. I mean, it’s Mike.”

“Fair point,” Robin concedes, brushing her hair behind her ear. Nancy’s breath catches in her throat at the sight. “But seriously. You should call us if you ever need to be near someone else who. . . gets it. You can’t deal with this shit on your own, and we all care about you.”

Nancy doesn’t know when the hell her eyes welled up, but suddenly there are tears on her sweater, and Robin’s pulling her into this tight, bone-crushing hug, and Nancy’s melting against her as Jonathan’s exasperated voice floats in from the living room; he’s telling Steve to pipe down, already, because they’re at the best part of the movie. Nancy didn’t know Nightmare on Elm Street HAD a best part. 

“It’s okay,” Robin’s saying, all quiet like she gets when she’s talking to Steve about his college applications or comforting one of the kids when they’re upset, “it’s okay, Nancy. Jesus. You can’t bottle this shit up anymore.”

Nancy laughs wetly, then, because Robin doesn’t know the half of it, and maybe she does have a problem, because suddenly she can’t bear the thought of spending another night sleeping by herself with her bedside lamp on and the covers pulled up to her chin. 

When she pulls away, Robin is sympathy-crying. Nancy’s noticed that about her, too-- the way her eyes glisten whenever one of the kids is losing it. Just last week, Lucas came knocking on the Byers’ door with a welt under one eye, Max standing beside him on the porch, clutching his hand in hers. Nancy was over; she’d agreed to help Steve and Robin learn how to make different dinners from Joyce’s old cookbook, so that they’d be able to eat more than ramen when they finally moved into the apartment they’d been eyeing on the edge of town.

She still remembers the way Steve’s whole face had hardened when he saw Lucas all beat up, the way his jaw tensed. She knew he was protective of the kids, but what shocked her was when Robin had to get up and leave the room when Lucas started crying halfway through recounting what had happened (some racist asshole at school had thrown a punch, and Lucas hadn’t been quick enough to dodge it). Nancy followed her while Steve dug through the first aid kit for an antiseptic wipe, and she finally found Robin in the bedroom she shared with Steve. She had her face in her hands, and her shoulders were shaking. Nancy didn’t know what to do, so she turned on her heel and crept back into the living room. 

Later, Steve told Nancy it was normal, that that was just how Robin was. ‘She’s an empath, or some shit,’ he’d said, expression soft the way it always got when he talked about her, ‘or at least that’s what Dustin said, anyway. She feels with other people, not just for them.’

So now, Nancy feels a tiny sliver of guilt prick at her. She reaches up and wipes a stray tear off Robin’s cheek, fingers skimming over freckles, scars, a jawline. Robin tenses, and Nancy feels her heart climb into her throat. She fucked up. She fucked up. 

“Nance! Robin!” Steve yells suddenly, breaking Nancy out of her panic. “Get your asses in here! This shit is insane!”

“No it’s not,” Jonathan deadpans, and Robin shakes her head like she’s clearing her thoughts and drags Nancy back into the living room. “If you were paying attention, you’d understand it.”

“I WAS paying attention,” Steve argues, throwing his hands up exasperatedly as Jonathan flicks the TV off. “They tricked us! They made us think everything was fine and everyone was alive at the end, and then--”

“Dingus,” Robin interrupts, smiling when Jonathan laughs, “With all due respect, I don’t think it’s the end of the world.”

Steve gapes at her in mock offense. “They LIED, Robin! They lied to us!”

“Movies are ART, Steve! Art is subjective!”

“Your face is subjective!”

Robin gasps, and then lunges for the nearest pillow and chucks it straight at Steve, and that really sets them off. 

Nancy sighs, shooting a tired glance at Jonathan. He shrugs at her. Robin and Steve get like this sometimes, all fired up and petty over nothing. Every time they fight like this, it’s half-hearted-- Robin aims the pillow at Steve’s lap instead of his face, Steve pulls her down onto the couch in retaliation but only ends up hugging her. They’re gentle with each other in a way Nancy’s never seen Steve act around anyone else, and it makes her heart swell with warmth instead of jealousy. 

Once Steve and Robin have chilled the hell out, Jonathan stretches out in Nancy’s dad’s oversized armchair and beckons Steve over. He bounces up from the couch, tugging the yellow blanket with him as Robin grumbles about having to dig another one out of the basket. 

Nancy tells everyone good night, and she’s about to go back up to her room when a hand settles on her shoulder. 

She turns, and it’s Robin, clutching a heavy, floral-patterned quilt that Nancy recognizes as her grandmother’s. 

“We can share the couch if you want. Or I can take the floor. C’mon, don’t go up there alone.”

Nancy’s heart stutters, skips a beat. She nods, but the action is delayed, and it just looks awkward. 

Robin doesn’t seem to notice, just smiles and guides her to the couch, which is wide enough for both of them to lie comfortably on, thank God, and they settle back against the cushions and pull the blanket around them as rain begins to shower down outside.

Nancy breathes out slowly and tries not to think about the girl laying beside her or the way she’d touched her face earlier, but it doesn’t work. All she can think about is the three inches of space between them, how easy it would be to close the gap and-- 

Robin’s hair smells like oranges. 

Nancy is screwed. 

\---

When Nancy wakes up, she’s alone. 

Jonathan and Steve aren’t in the armchair anymore, and the place beside her on the couch is empty. She blinks blearily, trying to remember if she’d had any nightmares the night before. Sometimes, she’ll wake up with no memory of them, but then they’ll rush back to her in vivid, pungent shards when she’s making coffee or fixing breakfast or driving Mike to the Byers’ house. Over time, she’s learned that it’s best to try to dredge up the memories before you’re on the road. Once, she’d almost swerved off the bridge in the middle of town on the way to pick up groceries when the image of Bob Newby being ripped apart planted itself in her brain and dug its teeth in.

Now, she can’t recall dreaming of anything gruesome from the night before. No flickering lights, grainy dark forests, or dimly-lit hospital hallways. It’s a start. 

Nancy blows out a breath, then swings herself off the couch, traipsing into the kitchen. There’s a light on, and Robin and Jonathan are crowded around the stove, making scrambled eggs and pancakes. 

“How do you know when to flip them?” Robin asks Jonathan, her brows furrowed together in concentration. Nancy has this fleeting urge to smooth out the worry-line on Robin’s forehead, but it’s gone as soon as it arrives. 

“When the bubbles pop,” Jonathan says. Robin nods, all focused, and flips the pancake in the pan she’s holding. 

“Morning,” Nancy greets. They both turn, Jonathan a little sleep-mussed still, and smile identically tired smiles. Nancy thinks they’re a lot alike even if they won’t ever admit it. Not personality-wise, because Jonathan’s a misting of rain where Robin’s a hurricane, but in the little ways. They both wear jackets inside, pour their milk before their cereal (which is just wrong in so many ways, but they’re weirdos so she guesses it’s part of their brand), and listen almost exclusively to The Talking Heads. 

“Hey, Wheeler,” Robin says, shaking the pan she’s holding almost vigorously. Jonathan sighs, waving by way of greeting. 

“Robin, don’t do that--”

“I do what I want, when I want, Byers. I’m my own person, and if I want to scramble this pancake, I will!”

“You can’t scramble a pancake,” he retorts, smiling when Nancy laughs. It’s more to fill the quiet than anything, because her mind’s already wandering. Robin’s hair is all messed up from laying on the couch, wavy and shiny under the overhead light. Nancy wants to run her fingers through it, a little. 

“Where’s Steve?” Nancy asks. 

“Doing his hair,” Robin says, shaking her head at the idea. “We told him there was no reason to, but he was all, ‘I need to look like myself when the kids wake up,’ so. . . he cares way too much about keeping up his image for those dorks.”

“God, tell me about it,” Jonathan says. He sounds painfully irritated and impossibly fond at the same time. 

Nancy laughs, and Robin joins in, and then the basement door bursts open and Max marches into the hall, making a beeline for the kitchen. 

“I TOLD them you were making pancakes!” She shouts by way of greeting, and pivots on her heel to race back to the door, flinging it open. “Mike! Lucas, Dustin! They’re making pancakes!” 

There’s a faint clattering, and Mike, Dustin, Lucas, Will, and El all crash into the hall, looking disheveled but slightly more alive than Nancy feels.

“Slow down, we’re not even done yet, freaks,” Robin says, ruffling El’s hair when the kid follows Max into the kitchen. Jonathan smiles at the kids as they all pile into the room, Lucas already making a beeline for the coffeemaker. Nancy wonders faintly when the kids started drinking coffee. The idea is vaguely unnerving-- they’re all already hyper enough as it is. 

“Hey, don’t start the party without me,” Steve says from the hall. He’s just come downstairs, and he looks half-awake and half-dead, dark circles still under his eyes from the night before. At least his hair’s combed perfectly. Nancy stifles a laugh into her palm. 

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Dingus,” Robin tells him, cackling when he scowls at her. 

“We’ve been over this, Rob-- that nickname is tired. You’ve done all you can with it, it’s time to move on.”

“Yeah,” Jonathan adds, “we need something fresh. Something that’ll really get under his skin.”

“How about Dumbass?” Max suggests with a grin. Jonathan flicks a dish towel at her, and she scurries away, giggling, to stand with El beside the kitchen table, where the rest of the kids have all fallen into chairs and started chattering away. 

“Nah,” Robin says. “I need something with a nice ring to it.”

“Moron,” Mike supplies. Robin turns to lock eyes with Steve then; they share some sort of secret look, her raising her eyebrows and him stifling a laugh. An inside joke, Nancy guesses.

“That title is taken,” Robin says, and Steve snickers, elbowing her on his way to get a mug down from the cabinet by the sink. “And anyway, I still think Dingus is the best insult. It has history behind it, Steve! Years of history!”

“One year of history,” Jonathan corrects cheekily, earning a halfhearted scowl from Robin. He pats her shoulder placatingly in lieu of an apology.

“Fine, keep your third-grader vocabulary,” Steve tells her, laughing when she punches him in the shoulder. 

When Robin announces that the pancakes are done (and only two of them are burnt), the kids all stand up again and crowd around the stove, fighting over which ones they want while Jonathan puts the eggs he’s scrambled in a bunch of different bowls. They’re her parents’ wedding china, and Nancy worries briefly that the kids might drop one of them, but then again, they’re freshmen in high school now. She keeps forgetting how old they’re getting; it kind of makes her feel ancient.

“Is there cereal?” El asks, and Nancy nods, pulling open the nearest cabinet. 

“Why do you want cereal when there are pancakes?” Dustin asks her incredulously, piling two onto his plate and drowning them in maple syrup. Nancy’s mom is going to be pissed about that, but she lets it slide. 

“She doesn’t really like pancakes,” Max informs him, grabbing a bowl of eggs for herself and another, presumably, for El. “She says they’re like flat, fake waffles.”

El nods vehemently. “Yes, because they are! They’re. . . trying to BE waffles. But they can’t be. Because they are pancakes. . . imposter-cakes.”

“Exactly!” Steve says, snapping his fingers at El like she’s given him a word he’s been looking for. Jonathan rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. 

“El,” Lucas says, sighing, “they’re basically the same thing.”

There’s a beat of silence. 

El looks stricken, and so do the rest of the kids-- they all whirl on him like he’s just declared he’s killed someone, and Robin cackles when Lucas steps back a little. The sound makes the kitchen seem impossibly brighter-- even with all the lights on. The kids flipped every switch on their way into the kitchen. 

“Excuse me?!” Dustin practically yells, bounding over to the table to set his plate down. “The SAME THING, Lucas? Out of all the idiotic things you’ve said--”

“Pancakes are FLAT,” El cuts in, her eyes all narrowed. Lucas backs away from her, both hands up like he’s actually scared, and Nancy can’t blame him. Even Will looks scandalized. 

“Waffles have more crunch,” Mike is saying, waving his hands emphatically, “And pancakes get all soggy if you put too much syrup on them--” he gestures to Dustin’s plate to exemplify this, and Jonathan finally laughs “--whereas waffles don’t. You can’t just say shit like that in my kitchen, Lucas. This is MY house--”

“Okay, fine, Jesus!” Lucas shouts through a laugh. “They’re different! They’re not the same!”

El visibly relaxes, and Steve muffles a laugh into Jonathan’s shoulder. 

“Thank you,” El says, taking the bowl of dry cereal from Nancy. She crunches on it as she makes her way to the table, and all the other kids follow suit. 

Once everyone’s settled into that light, comfortable breakfast conversation, Steve, Jonathan, Robin, and Nancy all head back into the living room, eating their own breakfast on the couch. 

Robin’s stretched out on the floor with her back against the coffee table, and Nancy keeps trying to avoid looking at her, but it’s impossible. She’s still in her pajamas-- an oversized T-shirt that looks like one Steve used to wear, and Star Wars pajama pants that pool around her ankles-- and her hair is pushed back behind her ears, all messy in the back from sleeping. Her eyes are awake even if the rest of her isn’t, all shiny as she laughs at some stupid joke Jonathan tells about Will, and Nancy feels this pull in her chest. Is this what it really feels like? Is love watching a girl you feel tied to chuck her napkin at your ex-boyfriend while he makes fun of her Star Wars pajama pants? Is it trying to hide your blush when she takes your plate for you wordlessly and washes it in your sink? Is it watching her settle a few feet away from you and feeling a strange magnetic pull you never felt with any of the boys you’d dated? 

If Nancy felt butterflies with Jonathan and Steve, she feels hummingbirds with Robin, and that thought alone is kind of giving the Demogorgon and the Mindflayer and whatever the hell last July was a run for their money. 

Finally, the kids break her out of her thoughts. 

“Steve!” Dustin shouts from the kitchen table, all boundless energy even at eight in the morning. 

“What!” Steve yells back, more an exclamation of annoyance than a question. Robin laughs. 

Instead of continuing to shout, Dustin comes rushing into the living room, looking wild-eyed with excitement. Something about it makes the coil of tension in Nancy’s chest unravel a little. 

“Will said there’s a new drive-in in Indianapolis and we’d only have to drive for an hour to get there! They’re playing The Outsiders!”

Steve blinks a little like he’s processing, then throws a questioning glance Jonathan’s way. He shrugs, and Robin nods emphatically, already looking excited. 

“I mean, we’ve got nothing else planned,” Steve reasons, checking an imaginary watch while Dustin pumps his fist in the air celebratorily, “but! Hey, Henderson, get your ass back in here! But we have to call Joyce and Hopper and everyone’s parents first, got that?”

“Sure, Steve!” Dustin yells, already halfway to the kitchen. Nancy feels lighter now. 

Steve rolls his eyes so hard it looks like it must hurt, and Jonathan swats at him playfully as the kids’ excited shouting floats in from the kitchen. It colors the morning a little brighter, and Nancy can finally drag her eyes away from Robin and her messy hair and her beaming smile. 

Thirty minutes later, the kids are dressed and crowding around Steve and Nancy’s cars, all shoving limbs and frustrated sighs as they try to figure out who’s sitting where. Steve’s looking dejected and slightly disgruntled behind the wheel, but he’s got an arm slung around Jonathan, who’s sitting in the passenger’s seat. Nancy waves at them through the window of her car. 

She’d agreed to drive herself and Robin, as well as Max, Will, and El. This was more due to the fact that she had no other choice than anything else-- Hopper had insisted gruffly over the phone that El ride with a “responsible driver”, at which point Joyce grabbed the phone from him and stressed that she wanted Will in a safe car, too. When Steve pointed at Nancy’s car decisively and declared it the “boring bus”, Max had latched onto El and told Robin she needed to ride with them, too, because she wasn’t spending an hour crammed into a car without music playing. Robin brings tapes with her everywhere, so Nancy guesses it was more about that than anything else, but it still tugged up a spike of worry in her gut. 

So Robin’s in the passenger’s seat, flipping Steve off as he cranks up Jonathan’s Talking Heads mix and pulls out of the driveway. He’s leading the way to the drive-in with Dustin as navigator, which is a little alarming, but Nancy’s pretty good at reading maps by now, so if they somehow end up lost, she thinks she’ll be able to get them back on track. 

“Robin, put on a tape,” Max is saying, giggling through her words when El bounces in her seat and demands they listen to Madonna. 

Nancy rolls her eyes fondly, turning the key in the ignition as Robin shoves a tape labelled “Songs to Kiss Girls To” in the tape player. Her breath catches in her throat at that, a little, because Robin is loud and unafraid and Nancy wishes, wishes, wishes she could be that way, could let herself wander down that path in her mind to daydreams about kissing anyone other than a boy. 

“Lucky Star” floats through the car as Nancy follows Steve out of her neighborhood, her hands already white-knuckling the wheel because Robin’s propping her feet up on the dash and her legs are graceful and out-of-a-magazine beautiful, and the kids are all dancing in the back already, Max shouting the lyrics as the sky blurs into the trees. It’s a white sheet today, cloudy as hell-- the way Hawkins gets a lot in the winter. Nancy can do that, can think about trees and the early-December chill and the chords of the song instead of the label on the tape, instead of Robin’s legs, instead of her voice. 

Robin knows all the words, and she’s singing with Madonna right on-key, shouting along with the kids. Her voice is raspy, but it still has a feminine edge that makes Nancy grip the steering wheel a little tighter and stare decisively straight ahead, eyes zeroed in on Steve’s car in front of them. She should have just asked Jonathan to ride with her, but he was excited to be with Steve for the drive there, all shiny-eyed and blushy. She knows he needs to get out of the house more, they all do, really, and he usually won’t go anywhere unless the kids practically beg him. It was nice to see him excited about something for once, so Nancy smiled at Robin and told her they’d have fun with Max and El and Will. ‘Of course we will,’ Robin replied, ‘they’re the only valid children in this group.’

And so now Nancy’s sentenced herself to an hour of this. She kind of wants to pull over and throw up. And alright, fine, maybe that’s a bit dramatic, but she hates that she can’t think about Robin in a normal way, and sitting beside her and her raspy singing voice and her wavy hair and her goofy dance moves and her fucking perfume is making Nancy itch all over. She feels trapped. 

The song changes, and Nancy puts her turn signal on, and ‘Tainted Love’ starts playing, all synth and heavy drum beats, and it fits the mood a bit more and she kind of settles back into her body. 

After about thirty minutes, the kids go quiet, and when Nancy glances in the rearview mirror, El’s got her head on Max’s shoulder, their hands tangled together in Max’s lap, and Will’s leaning against the window on her other side, his eyes shut against the passing trees and slate-gray sky. They’re asleep. The sight is so startlingly cute that Nancy almost forgets to keep her eyes on the road. 

“They’re sleeping,” she tells Robin. “Take the tape out, would you?”

“Oh! Right, you got it,” Robin says, ejecting the tape and shoving it back in her beaded bag. She smiles at the kids, craning her neck to see them all cuddled up in the backseat. 

The car goes quiet, and Nancy kind of regrets asking Robin to shut off the music. She keeps her eyes trained on Steve’s car-- he’s got the kids’ windows rolled down, and Nancy swears she can faintly hear them singing. It’s her imagination compensating, she knows, but Jonathan’s probably brought a Smiths tape, too, which Nancy knows for a fact Mike loves even if he glowers every time he hears it at the Byers’ house. She thinks Dustin and Lucas would sing along just to bug him.

“So, what kind of music are you into, Nance?” Robin asks after a minute, filling the silence. That’s another thing Nancy’s noticed about her, that need she has to always be talking or singing or moving. It reminds her of Steve, sort of, and she figures maybe that’s another reason they click so well. They have to maintain some semblance of normalcy no matter the situation. They can’t just sit in the quiet. 

“Um, I guess whatever Jonathan’s forcing me to listen to this week,” she replies, laughing a little. “Crowded House, I think-- it’s this new Australian rock band? I like ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over.’”

She wonders idly if Robin can tell she’s nervous. She shouldn’t be, Nancy knows, because it’s just Robin, just Steve’s friend, but it’s also Robin who hugged Nancy last night and slept next to her on the couch and has tapes labelled “Songs to Kiss Girls To” like it’s no big deal, Robin who looks gorgeous even half-dead from sleep deprivation and in yesterday’s clothes because she hadn’t brought a new set with her to the Wheelers’ house, Robin who can light up a room just by smiling or laughing or singing a made-up song with the kids. 

“Never heard of them,” Robin replies. “But yeah, Jonathan has good taste. He’s got Steve on a Smiths kick, I think. He keeps humming ‘This Charming Man’ under his breath at work, and it’s making Keith slowly lose his mind.”

Nancy smiles at that, relaxing a little. “God, of course Jonathan’s influence is getting Steve into trouble. I should have warned him about that, y’know. Jonathan’s one hell of a rule-breaker.”

Robin straight-up cackles at that, throwing her head back against the headrest of her seat. It makes Nancy feel all warm inside, even though she’s pretty sure the winter chill outside is bleeding into the car. 

The laughing wakes the kids up, and Max flips them off as Will asks Robin to play her road trip mix. Nancy doesn’t think this qualifies as a road trip, really, but she lets Robin put in another tape anyway, even rolling down the windows in the back for the kids. 

They scream out the words to ‘Just Like Heaven’ as Nancy follows Steve’s car to Indianapolis, head-banging and playing air-guitar during the instrumental breaks, all wild and loud and real. 

It makes Nancy want to snap a picture. Of all of them, not just the kids and not just Robin. She wants a through-the-windshield shot of everyone. Her behind the wheel, smiling so hard it kind of hurts, Robin singing along, shaking her head back and forth, and the kids going crazy in the back, all blurs of movement and half-shivering from the cold air that’s leaking into the car. 

It kind of makes her forget about the liking-Robin problem. Just a little bit.

\---

The Outsiders is one hell of a movie. 

The kids love it, of course-- halfway through the movie, Dustin declares loudly that Sodapop is just like Steve, earning him several dirty looks from other moviegoers. Mike and Lucas laugh. They’re all piled onto the hood of Steve and Nancy’s cars, huddled together against the cold. 

“No, but seriously-- Sodapop is Steve, Ponyboy is me,” Dustin’s saying, waving his hands wildly as El chucks popcorn at him from her seat beside Max. 

“No, Ponyboy’s more like Will,” Mike cuts in. “Or me, and Will’s Johnny.”

“Hey, dipsticks,” Robin hisses, “shut up and watch the movie instead of arguing about it!”

“Sorry, MOM,” Mike mutters, rolling his eyes like the little shit he is. Nancy doesn’t mean that with any real bite to it-- he’s just going through a phase. 

They keep chattering throughout the movie, even though Robin’s comment quiets them down for the most part. It’s a good film-- the characters do end up reminding Nancy of the kids a little, all tough on the surface, but still comedic and likeable in their own ways. 

They all cheer when Johnny, Ponyboy, and Dally save the children from the burning church, and they cry when Dally and Johnny die later, at the very end. 

Max is especially shaken up by Dally’s death-- Nancy thinks maybe he reminded her of Billy. The actor was strong-jawed and stoic-looking, and his character had that mean, take-no-shit edge that Billy was always flaunting. It makes Nancy choke up a little, watching Max swipe at her eyes. 

She catches Steve crying, too-- when Johnny tells Ponyboy to stay gold, he buries his face in Jonathan’s neck, and Nancy thanks the Universe for the surrounding darkness. They’re not in Hawkins, but still. If someone-- a homophobe, Robin would say-- had looked over, seen the way Jonathan pressed a kiss to Steve’s head, it might have stirred up trouble. 

It makes Nany’s heart ache a little, thinking like that. She watches them-- Steve and Jonathan-- and thinks maybe, maybe. Maybe she’s like them, just a little bit. Maybe her feelings about Robin-- the nervousness, the word-tangling issue, the magnetic pull-- are real. Maybe that’s what she was missing with Steve and Jonathan. Maybe it’s love that she was missing. 

Now, Nancy looks over at Robin, because she’s watching the film with rapt attention and isn’t looking in Nancy’s direction. Her hair is still messy, but it frames her face prettily in a way that reminds Nancy of a movie character. The film illuminates her face, and Nancy thinks she looks a little bit like an angel. The thought slams into her, cold and paralyzing. She tears her eyes away and focuses back on the screen. 

Beside her, El whispers something to Max, who giggles. They’re holding hands. 

Needless to say, everyone loves the movie-- they’re all still raving about it when they crowd back into the cars, the kids all latching onto each other before they separate again even though they’ll see each other back at the house in a little more than an hour.

Nancy catches Steve pull Robin into a hug before they get back into her car-- he tugs her against him quick, a practiced movement, and she tucks her face into his shoulder before releasing him just as fast. It makes a lump shove its way up in Nancy’s throat. Sometimes she wishes she had someone she could do that kind of thing with. Someone to hug, just for the sake of hugging them. 

On the drive home, the kids sleep the whole time. Robin shoves a different tape into the deck, and U2’s “Surrender” blares into the stillness. Nancy hasn’t heard this song in a couple years. She guesses she first listened to it with Jonathan, in his room. ‘83, maybe. It feels a world away from now. 

The song is jangly, all guitar riffs and the angsty lilt of the lead singer’s voice. It calms Nancy, weirdly, and now that it’s dark Robin is just a shape beside her, just a silhouette in the grainy night. 

They just sit, soaking in the song and remembering the movie and the way the kids had laughed. Nancy feels a little better now, a little less on edge. 

She thinks Robin might be her gay awakening. 

The thought doesn’t really scare her all that much, in the darkness of the car. At least, not as badly as the idea that she’s just secretly hateful and really is just afraid of Robin, like her dad would be. Nancy knows that’s not true, though. The nervousness isn’t fear, because it feels lighter. Different. Jangly, like the song that’s playing. Nancy knows what fear feels like, and this isn’t it. 

They must be halfway home when Nancy feels Robin shift and put her hand on her arm. She’s wearing a bunch of different rings, Nancy notices-- two on her index finger, one a simple silver band and the other a gold ring with a little turquoise stone in the middle; a plain black ring on her middle finger; a green beaded one on her ring finger. Robin is composed of a million little details. Nancy is seeing it more and more now-- the rings, her chipped black nail polish, the freckles dusting her nose, the tiny red treehouse pin on the collar of her jacket. 

“Nancy,” Robin says, dragging her out of her thoughts. She looks half-amused and half-worried. “You wanna pull over and let me drive the rest of the way? You look beat.”

Nancy huffs out a quiet laugh. Robin’s hand is warm on the crook of her elbow. 

“Nah, I’m good. It’s only, what, twenty more minutes?”

“Yeah,” Robin sighs, checking an imaginary watch like Steve had that morning. A running joke they have, maybe. Nancy wishes she knew what it meant. 

“The kids are gonna be pissed when we wake them up,” Robin adds, as an afterthought. 

“Oh, for sure,” Nancy agrees. “Once, we drove them down to the Byers’ before they moved back to Hawkins-- my Mom and I did, I mean-- and when we got home, Mike threw an actual fit. Stomping around and yelling and everything. Max never let him forget it.”

“Predictable,” Robin comments. “The kid’s a piece of work. I mean-- shit, I didn’t mean that in a rude way--”

Nancy laughs again, a little more real this time, and Robin joins in. “It’s fine, Robin. I get it. . . yeah, Mike’s going through his I-hate-everyone phase for sure.”

“Last week he told me the only reason he kept Steve and I around was for the Family Video discounts we give the kids.”

Nancy has to roll her eyes at that, because really-- what a concept. “That little shit. He’s lying, y’know-- he loves you and Steve, even if he’d sooner die than admit it.”

“I know,” Robin says simply, leaning back and resting her head against the window. Nancy can kind of see her in the headlights reflecting off the glass. She looks tired and a little giddy.

Nancy keeps driving. 

When they get back to the Wheelers’ house, Steve has to carry El inside. She wouldn’t wake up no matter how much Max shook her; Nancy thinks she might just be pretending to be asleep so she doesn’t have to carry herself inside and down the stairs to the basement again. The other kids stumble after him, all half-asleep and grumbling, and Jonathan holds the door for Robin and Nancy, ever the gentleman. 

“Do we have to brush our teeth?” Mike is asking, and he sounds so much like he did when he was a kid and tired after five-hour trips to their grandparents’ house that Nancy wants to fold him into a hug and tell him no, that they can all just go to sleep in what they’re wearing, if they’re that exhausted. 

Instead, she says, “Yes. You’re disgusting.”

Mike glowers at her. “No, you are. Your makeup is messed up under your eyes, it makes you look like a zombie.”

Steve glares back at him for her, but he pats Mike on the shoulder anyway. “Brush your damn teeth, Wheeler-- all of you.”

Defeated, the kids parade sleepily upstairs to the bathroom, already arguing over who would get to use it first. 

“Told you,” Robin says to Nancy. “He’s a piece of work.”

Nancy laughs, and so does Robin, and later, once everyone’s settled down and the kids are asleep on the basement couch and the air mattress and Steve has called Hopper and told him they’re letting the kids crash at the Wheelers’ again, Nancy goes up to her room and Robin follows her. 

They sink down on her bed, and Nancy is acutely aware of the fact that she kind of hates her room. It’s too frilly, too floral and pastel and girly. She gets this sudden, gripping urge to tear away her wallpaper and paint the walls dark green. Or red, or midnight-blue. Her mother would throw a fit. 

“What are you smiling about, Nance?” Robin asks, leaning back against the headboard beside her. She’s in the same pajamas she wore the night before, only now she’s wearing this big sweater over the T-shirt-- it’s light gray and looks soft and warm in the orange glow of Nancy’s beside lamp. She thinks it might be Jonathan’s. They share clothes now, sometimes, because they’ve got the same taste in bands and Robin didn’t get to bring a lot of clothes with her after her parents kicked her out. 

“Oh, nothing,” Nancy tells her, eyes flicking down to her lap. “Just. I had a stupid idea.”

“What?” Robin presses, leaning forward. Another Steve similarity: neither of them know when to let things go. 

Nancy shakes her head a little dismissively. “It’s just-- don’t you just hate my room?”

Robin’s eyes widen, and she looks around a little, like she’s actually considering it. 

“I mean. . . no?”

Nancy laughs. “Come on, be honest.”

“Okay, fine, so it’s a little girly. A little frilly. But that’s not a bad thing!” Robin says. “You can. . . you should be able to feel like a badass and still have a pretty room.”

“Thank you,” Nancy says. “But I hate it, I think. It just. . . everything about it just reminds me of who I used to be. Put-together, perfect. . . I’m not that girl anymore.”

“Nancy,” Robin says, looking serious and kind of sad. “You can. . . y’know, you can change it, if you want to.”

For some reason, Nancy feels like that wasn’t what Robin meant to say. There’s something deeper in her expression, something more grim. Her sweater looks so soft. Nancy wants to hug her. 

“Yeah, that was the stupid idea,” she says. 

“Then let’s do it,” Robin tells her, nodding decisively. 

Nancy huffs out another laugh. “Nah, my mom would kill me.”

“Screw whatever she thinks-- if you wanna change your room, you should be able to.”

“It reminds me of Barb.”

Robin sucks in a breath, and Nancy instantly regrets saying it. It’s true, though-- she looks at the pillows on her bed and remembers throwing them at Barb across the room, laughing; the radio on her night table was what they used to listen to music on while they did their homework; half of the necklaces on Nancy’s dresser are gifts from Barb; the wallpaper was a backdrop for their fashion shows in middle school. It all feels wrong, like she’s inside someone else’s room, someone else’s life. 

“Sorry,” Nancy says, hating how quiet and small her voice sounds in the stillness. 

“What?” Robin says, gripping Nancy’s shoulder and yanking her back into the present, “No, no, don’t apologize. You’re fine, Nance, I was just-- you just caught me off guard.”

Nancy doesn’t know what it is about Robin in moments like this that makes her want to cry so bad. She just wants to touch her. To really touch her, more than just skim her face with her fingertips. Nancy wants to hug her, to kiss her cheek or her lips or her forehead, and she doesn’t know why. She doesn’t know why she’s thinking like this during a conversation about Barb, and Nancy hates not knowing things, and she feels dread pool heavily in her gut. She wishes she could just shut off her brain. 

“Nancy,” Robin’s saying, and Nancy vaguely registers the feeling of arms wrapping around her. “Hey, it’s okay, you’re okay.”

Damn it. She’s crying, she’s been crying this whole time, just staring at the wall, and now Robin’s hugging her and she’s ruining it by crying even though that’s the reason Robin’s hugging her in the first place, because why else would she hug her? Oh God. 

“Nancy. Nancy, you need to breathe.”

Robin’s voice sounds far away, and Nancy is hearing it through the glass sheet. There’s a wall between them, and it’s muffling everything up, and all she can hear is the sound of blood rushing in her ears and all she can feel is this numb, pins-and-needles sensation in her hands. They got like that when the flesh monster was chasing her through the hospital last year, and when Joyce confirmed to her that Barb was really gone.

Robin’s face swims in Nancy’s vision, and then she’s gripping Nancy’s wrists, and she’s saying something, something like, ‘be right back’, and she’s leaving the room, running, and then seconds later, Steve and Jonathan are rushing in with Robin behind them, and they’re all crowding around her, all scared, and Nancy can’t breathe. 

Steve’s saying something, something Nancy can’t hear because she’s gasping for air, and then he turns to Robin and says something else, and Robin rushes out of the room again, and Jonathan sinks down beside Nancy on the bed and takes her hand and puts it over his heart. It calms her, a little. They used to do this when one of them got nightmares, back before they split up. 

He’s saying something to her, and she thinks he’s telling her to breathe in time with his heartbeat. She tries to-- inhales shakily, lets the air back out. Does it again, and again, and again, until she can hear better and everything feels less far away and more tangible. Steve nods encouragingly at her, and then Robin rushes back into the room holding a glass of water and the flowery quilt they’d used as a blanket last night. 

“Holy shit,” Nancy says when she can breathe again. She laughs, kind of watery, and wipes her eyes. Jonathan heaves a sigh of relief and Steve does, too, collapsing on the bed beside them. Robin just stands in front of them while Nancy gets her bearings and feels less like she’s floating above everything. 

“Jesus Christ, Nancy,” Robin says. She looks like she’s just seen a ghost. “You just took, like, fifty years off my lifespan.”

Nancy laughs again. It feels okay-- real. 

Robin hands her the water. “Here.”

Nancy takes small sips. Jonathan and Steve are wearing identical looks of concern. 

“I’m okay,” she tells them. Robin makes a little noise of disbelief. 

“You just had a panic attack.”

“It’s-- I’m just really tired,” Nancy says, and it sounds fake even to her. She winces, setting the water on her night table. Steve pats the space beside him on the bed, and Robin sits down, her eyes never leaving Nancy. 

“Nance,” she says, all serious despite how disheveled she looks, “you’re not okay. You-- we’re here for you. To help, with whatever this is.”

Nancy sighs exasperatedly, and Steve flinches. “There is no ‘this’, Robin! I’m fine, okay? Just. Just leave it.”

They all stare back at her, unconvinced. Worried. It makes her want to tear her hair out. 

The truth is, Nancy knows they’d all be fine with it-- with her liking girls. Of course they would. Robin is the same, and Steve loves her, and so does Jonathan. That’s not what’s scaring her. She thinks, on some deeper level, she isn’t okay with herself, because if she says it out loud, ‘I think I might like girls’, then it will be real. She doesn’t know if she’s ready for it to be real yet. 

“Okay,” Nancy sighs, when none of them make a move to get up or back off or leave the room. “Okay, so. . . this isn’t a trauma thing. It’s not-- that’s not what this is about. I mean, it might have been a factor in the. . . panic attack. . . but it wasn’t the driving reason.”

“Okay,” Jonathan says, nodding like they’re all listening. Robin and Steve are looking at her like she’s made of glass. 

“I. . . Can I just talk to Jonathan?” she says, and Steve’s on his feet, tugging Robin with him. They look a little hurt, but Nancy knows she can’t say this in front of them. Not now. 

When it’s just Nancy and Jonathan in the glow of her lamp, facing each other on the bed, Nancy says, “You were right.”

His eyebrows furrow together, and she almost wants to laugh. 

“About what?”

Nancy sighs. “About me,” she says. “Liking Robin.”

Jonathan’s eyes widen, and then his face softens. “Oh, Nance.”

She nods, leaning forward a little. “I really do. I. . . God, Jonathan, it’s all I can think about. And it was okay, earlier-- I mean, on the drive home I was thinking about it, and I was fine with it, but. . . I don’t know. I don’t know, I think I might not be. Like, I’m okay with liking Robin, but. Maybe not with what it means. About me.”

She really hopes she’s making sense. 

Jonathan blows out a breath. 

“Well, shit, Nancy. . . you’ve gotta tell her. I mean, when you’re ready. Steve’s told me about how she talks about you, and it sounds like. . . like maybe she might feel the same way.”

“Really? Are you sure?”

“I mean, that’s just what it sounds like. And anyway, that’s not the big problem. The big problem is. . . you, maybe not accepting yourself.”

“Yeah,” Nancy says. She feels kind of drained now, like all her pent-up emotions have leaked out of her and she’s just a shell. She wants to sleep. 

“Nance,” Jonathan says, nudging her shoulder. She looks up at him. She didn’t realize she lost focus.

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he tells her, and it feels genuine. He just looks worried, and Nancy wants to tell him everything’s okay, that she’ll be alright, but she’s too tired to lie. 

A beat of silence passes, and Jonathan sighs, like he knows she’s exhausted and feels guilty for keeping her up. 

“Alright, I’ll let you get some sleep,” he says. “Should I tell Robin you need some space, or--?”

“No,” Nancy mumbles, getting comfortable under the covers and falling back into her pillow. “Just send her back in, I don’t want her sleeping on the floor.”

“Got it,” Jonathan says, pressing a little kiss to her forehead before he leaves the room. Nancy shuts off her lamp and listens to the patter of his footsteps as he goes down the stairs. 

A moment later, the door creaks and the mattress dips, and Robin’s beside her. She’s dragged the yellow blanket with her, and she lays on top of Nancy’s comforter instead of getting under it. It makes something in Nancy’s throat tighten, but she keeps her eyes closed and lets the fight drain out of her. There’s a bone-deep tiredness that’s settling in her, a warm, sluggish feeling that unwinds her nerves and unravels the tangle of worry lodged in her chest. The last thing she hears before she drifts off is a little sigh from the girl beside her. 

Robin’s hair still smells like oranges. Nancy wonders if she uses a special shampoo. 

\---

“I just don’t understand why they had to kill Johnny,” Will is saying over breakfast. It’s brighter out today, the sun slanting in through the gap in the curtains, painting Nancy’s kitchen milky yellow. 

“Because,” Jonathan says, like they’ve had this conversation before, “it was an integral part of Ponyboy’s character development.”

“Your MOM was an integral part of Ponyboy’s character development,” Robin says as she stirs way too much cream into her coffee. 

Steve barks out this ridiculous laugh, and Nancy feels her heart swell with warmth. She feels lighter this morning, like she’s starting fresh. She woke up before anyone else, hopped in the shower. Turned the tap to the coldest setting. Now, she’s in a dark green sweatshirt that might be Jonathan’s, digging into her breakfast and trying to avoid Robin’s calculating gaze. 

“That makes zero sense,” Jonathan deadpans. 

“Uh, yeah,” Dustin says through his laughter, “that’s why it’s hilarious.”

“Jonny-boy needs a new sense of humor,” Steve tells the kids, patting Jonathan on the back as he goes to get the cereal from the cabinet. He blushes and swats at Steve as he passes; they both laugh at each other. 

Robin dumps what must be a cup of sugar into her coffee. Lucas watches her with a vaguely horrified expression. 

“But seriously, guys,” Will says, “there was no real reason for it. They just shoehorned it in there for. . . for shock value.”

“Exactly, little Byers,” Steve tells him. “But such are the ways of the cinema.”

Jonathan’s face twists, and Nancy knows he’s trying not to laugh. “Sorry, what the hell did you just say?”

“He means ‘that’s showbiz, baby,’” Robin says. “Which doesn’t even apply to this, by the way, because The Outsiders was a book before it became a movie.”

“Really?” El asks, sitting up a little straighter in her seat. She’s got bags under her eyes, but she looks happy. Steve made waffles for everyone this morning instead of pancakes. 

“Yeah,” Robin tells her, smiling. “I had to do a book report on it for AP Literature. It’s a really good book-- the author wrote it when she was only seventeen. You could probably read it with the chief’s help, El.”

El beams at her, all excited, and Nancy is tempted to go out later today and buy the book for her. She’s gotten so much better at reading, with Hopper’s help and some tutoring from Jonathan. She devours lower-level books now, and even some that are on-level, with a little extra assistance from Will. 

“We can probably find a copy in the library next week,” Dustin says, and the kids all brighten at that. They all seem a little drained this morning. Nancy hopes she didn’t wake any of them up with her little episode last night. The memory of it makes her wince. 

“You okay, Nance?” Robin asks. She’s got the sleeves of her sweater pulled down over her hands, and her hair’s disheveled. She’s half-leaning against Steve by the coffeemaker; he’s eating his breakfast standing up, offering her bites of his waffle every now and then. 

“Oh, yeah, I’m fine,” Nancy says, a little surprised to find that she actually means it. Her talk with Jonathan put her at ease last night; even if she still has shit to work through, he’s there for her. He understands, she thinks, about the self-loathing issue. Not that Nancy loathes herself-- it’s not that bad. She just has a little work to do when it comes to accepting herself. All the parts of herself. The girl-loving parts. 

Jesus Christ. 

“Good,” Robin replies. The kids have settled into their own side conversation, so they don’t seem to really pick up on the exchange. Nancy thinks they’re still talking about The Outsiders, who all of them would be if they were the characters in the film. They have a tendency to hyperfixate on things sometimes, like they do with their D&D games and the movies they rent from Family Video. She thinks it probably has something to do with the trauma-- distractions are important. Necessary. Nancy understands. 

After November 1983 happened, Jonathan visited Nancy’s house a lot. He’d bring all these tapes with him, collections of music he loved to listen to when he was sad, or angry, or afraid, or happy, or bored, and they’d play them on his Walkman that he took everywhere with him, laying back on Nancy’s bedroom floor and letting the guitar and piano and drums fill the silence for an hour. She thinks maybe the music was Jonathan’s thing-- his distraction. Steve’s was just talking to other people, Nancy included. He’d call her late at night, and she’d try to pry his feelings out of him, but he always wanted to talk about the latest movie coming out or whether or not Julie M. and Todd Davidson were together again or split up. It made her crazy, at the time, because all she wanted-- needed-- to talk about was Barb, and the portal in the woods, and the thing that had almost killed Jonathan. Now she just looks back and feels sorry for him. 

Nancy picks at her waffle. She can feel Robin’s eyes on her. 

“It was such bullshit that Dally died, too,” Max is saying, and Will nods emphatically. 

“Yeah, exactly! They didn't need to kill anyone off,” he says. Jonathan rolls his eyes a little, and Steve grins at him across the kitchen. Robin steals a slice of bacon from his plate, and he swats at her hand but lets her have it anyway.

“They kind of did, though,” Lucas argues. “Otherwise, nothing would have happened. The movie wouldn’t have meant anything.”

“I think Lucas is right,” El says in that quiet, clipped way she has. It makes Nancy smile a little. “The sad parts were. . . a theme.”

“Look at you, El,” Max says, smiling at her across the table like she’s proud. “Someone’s learning more than the rest of us in English class.”

El grins at her, shifts a little in her seat. Nancy thinks they might be playing footsie under the table. Steve told her they were together, a while ago. Back when he and Robin first moved in with the Byers family. He said he had El and Max’s permission to let her know, but he told her not to mention it around Hopper. ‘He would be fine with it, of course, ‘cause he loves El to death,’ Steve had said, ‘but they want to milk the sleepover arrangement they’ve got going on for as long as possible before he figures them out and starts enforcing the three-inches rule all over again.’

“I know it’s a theme,” Will says, pulling Nancy from her thoughts. “I just think it’d be cooler if the theme was a little less SAD.”

“THANK you,” Dustin says, pointing at Will like he’s given the correct answer to some math problem. Steve snickers into his coffee mug. 

“Life is sad, my strange little child friend,” Robin says mystically. This time, Jonathan laughs, tipping his head back a little. Steve watches him with this soft-eyed gaze that makes Nancy feel like she’s intruding on something. 

Will huffs exasperatedly at her, but he doesn’t look all that upset. “I know that better than any of us, Robin.”

This gets all of them, and laughter fills the kitchen. Will looks around at everyone like he’s proud of himself, and Nancy feels something bright and warm and comforting settle in her bones, like everything is falling into place. Mike is looking at Will across the table with this faint blush on his cheeks, and Nancy thinks briefly that they might be like El and Max, just better at hiding it; Dustin’s trying to shovel food into his mouth even as he laughs, and it’s just making El and Max giggle even harder while Lucas watches him with poorly-hidden disgust; Steve and Robin are falling into each other laughing at the kids, and Jonathan is gazing at them with this half-exasperated, half-adoring expression. Robin catches Nancy’s eye across the room and winks, and Nancy feels her face heat up. 

‘It sounds like she might feel the same way,’ Jonathan’s voice reminds her in her mind. 

She winks back. Robin blushes brighter than Max’s hair. 

\---

Later that night, Nancy pulls into the Byers’ driveway and fixes her hair in the side mirror of her car. Steve, Robin, and Jonathan insisted she come over for Byers Family Movie Night, because they were allowed one guest and Jonathan wanted her to help him and Robin ‘educate Steve’ more on music that was actually good. 

The Byers have left their porch light on for her, and it helps calm Nancy a little on the walk up to their front door. She knocks twice, hard and fast. 

Steve answers it, all bright-eyed and happy. He lets Nancy in, gestures for her to sit down. The Byers living room is a whirlwind of commotion: Hopper’s got a Billy Joel record on, “Uptown Girl” blasting through the living room; Jonathan’s on the couch with a pillow over his face, yelling for someone to turn the music off because ‘it’s abysmal’; Will is laughing at him, dancing around to the music with El and Robin as Joyce fiddles with the TV. Hopper watches them all from the kitchen with a big grin on his face that he’s trying to hide with his coffee mug. 

“Oh, hi, Nancy,” Joyce greets, waving from her spot on the floor. She’s messing with the antannae on the TV, looking kind of frazzled but happy nonetheless. Nany grins and waves back at her. 

“Uptown girl,” Robin sings, pointing at Nancy as she twirls El around, “she’s been livin’ in her white bread world!”

“As long as anyone with hot blood can,” Will yells, laughing when Jonathan chucks the pillow at him, “And now she’s looking for a downtown man!”

“And that’s what I am!” Robin shouts, spinning like a windmill and careening into Steve. He laughs wildly, catching her by the shoulders and shoving her towards Nancy. 

“Hi,” Robin says, her eyes shining, and Nancy really wants to kiss her. She shakes her head a little, clearing the thought and smiling back at Robin. “Hey.”

Robin grins wider and twirls Nancy around without warning. Nancy yelps, then laughs; they spin as Billy Joel croons into the night, El and Will’s gleeful voices shouting over the twangy guitar. Joyce kicks the TV, smiling when it finally buzzes to life. 

Finally, the song ends, and Nancy and Robin collapse dizzily onto the couch beside Jonathan. He’s glowering at them, and Nancy can’t help but laugh. 

“You are so dramatic,” she tells him. He rolls his eyes, and it reminds her of Mike. 

“I can not BELIEVE you just danced to that song, Nancy Wheeler-- that’s sacrilegious. After all the culturing I’ve done for you!”

“It was a good song!” Nancy protests, laughing when Steve shoves his way between them. 

“She’s right, Byers,” he says, snickering when Jonathan flicks his shoulder. 

“It’s a garbage song.”

“Hey!” Hopper says gruffly from the kitchen, pointing at Jonathan accusatorially. "This record is ART, kid. It’s a classic.”

“It’s from three years ago,” Jonathan deadpans. Joyce sighs, settling down on the floor with her back against the couch. 

“You know, I really wish you two would just work out your differences instead of arguing,” she says breezily. Jonathan looks scandalized, and Hopper rolls his eyes, pulling a chair from the kitchen table into the living room and settling in it. 

Robin nods like she’s agreeing with Joyce. “Male anger is nauseating,” she says. 

El and Will laugh, falling into the armchair next to the couch. It’s big enough to fit both of them, and they’ve already got their hands on the only blanket in the room. They remind Nancy of when she and Mike were really young, even though they’re the same age as him now. They look like they could be twins. 

“Alright, everyone comfy?” Joyce asks. The kids nod; Steve flashes her a thumbs-up as Robin cuddles into his side. She’s wearing an ACDC shirt-- probably her own, because Nancy’s never seen it on Jonathan-- and baggy sweatpants, but she somehow still looks like she’s stepped out of an indie magazine. Nancy tries hard not to stare as the movie starts up. 

She ends up doing it anyway.

\---

“Jonathan, turn up the music,” Robin says, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear.

Nancy, Robin, Steve, and Jonathan are all huddled in Steve and Robin’s room, taking turns choosing records from the stack Jonathan’s brought with him and the collection Steve and Robin have. They’ve got two lamps on-- Steve and Robin have a bunch of them all around the room, all from the thrift store downtown-- and Nancy settles back against Robin’s pillows, feeling calm wash over her when the song starts. 

It’s something by Stevie Nicks, Nancy thinks, all twangy guitar and twinkly piano chords. 

Jonathan looks mildly annoyed by it, sighing as Steve ruffles his hair playfully. They’re on Steve’s bed, legs tangled together. Technically Joyce doesn’t allow this, but they decided it would probably be fine for tonight since Nancy and Robin are here and they’re just listening to records. Joyce is asleep, now, anyway-- El popped in earlier to tell them, smiling mischievously when Steve and Jonathan jumped about a foot apart when she flung open the door. 

“What song is this?” Nancy asks Robin. She knows it’s her record; she’s got her head tipped back against the headboard beside Nancy, this serene look on her face Nancy’s only seen a couple of times. 

“Leather and Lace,” Robin says, smiling at her. It makes Nancy’s heart race a little. 

“For the record, Robin, this song makes me want to tear my hair out,” Jonathan says, earning him a glare from her. 

“When did you become such a music snob, Byers? I listen to all the indie crap you do and I still know when other songs are good. Stevie Nicks is timeless, asshole.”

Steve laughs at them, chucking a pillow at Robin to shut her up. She catches it and throws it back at him, hitting him square in the face. 

“Jonathan’s always been a music snob,” Nancy says, smiling innocently when he glowers at her. “Once, we got in a fight that must’ve lasted a week because I said The Smiths were overrated.”

Steve loses it at that; he’d been their mediator when it happened. It was back before Nancy and Jonathan broke up, sometime in September. She remembers calling Steve up, saying something like, ‘I think Jonahan might actually hate me now.’ The thought makes her giggle, now, and Robin joins in until they’re all just laughing at Jonathan as he gets progressively more annoyed. 

“I remember,” Steve wheezes out, “Nance calling me and being all, ‘Jonahan hates me,’ and when I got to her house she was CRYING--”

“Shut UP, Steve!” Nancy gasps, laughing through her words. 

“--and when I asked her what she did she told me, she said, ‘I told him I didn’t like The Smiths, and he just got up and drove home!’”

“Oh my God, Jonathan,” Robin says. Nancy laughs harder. 

“I needed time to process!” he sputters, laughing a little at himself. 

“Alright, that’s it,” Robin says, still giggling a little, “no more song suggestions from you, pal. You’re a goddamn elitist.”

Steve cackles, and Robin grins at him. “Tell your boyfriend to get off his high horse, Steven-- I think Nancy’s kind of right. Like, sure, I like The Smiths, but they didn’t INVENT music.”

Jonathan scoffs, and Steve pats his shoulder placatingly. 

When “Leather and Lace” ends, Robin hops up to change the record. Nancy tries not to watch her bite her lip as she searches through the pile on the floor to find the one she’s looking for. 

Finally, she sets a Talking Heads album on the turntable and bounces to her feet, dancing a little as the first song starts-- it’s upbeat this time, and Steve jumps up to join her in the middle of their bedroom, pulling a reluctant-looking Jonathan with him. They jump around, laughing at each other, and Nancy gets up and twirls around like she had earlier in the night, Robin shimmying over to her and yelling over the music. 

Nancy feels a little electric and a little like she’s flying when Robin grabs both her hands and spins her around; they crash into Steve and Jonathan, laughing wildly, and the song gets louder and faster, and they all start jumping along with the beat, Robin and Steve doing all these crazy, bizarre dance moves, and Nancy feels more alive than she has in weeks. 

“What song is this?!” She screams over the music, suddenly dying to know. It’s the perfect song to dance to, riffy and jangling and bright and fast. 

“The Girl Wants to Be with the Girls!” Robin yells back, laughing when Steve shoves her towards Nancy like he’d done when she first got there. Robin loses her balance, and Nancy grabs her around the waist reflexively. It shoots an electric thrill into her; Robin blushes, but she might just be tired from dancing. 

They stand there as Steve dances like an idiot and Jonathan hovers on the periphery watching him with a beaming, exasperated smile. Nancy feels like she’s walking on air when Robin smiles at her. 

“Having fun, Wheeler?”

“Yep!” Nancy says-- suddenly, feeling brave, she takes her hands off Robin’s waist and grabs her hands instead. They spin around together again, almost tripping over the pile of records spread out on the floor. 

The drum beats in the song pick up, going faster and faster as they laugh, and then the song changes. 

Nancy collapses on the floor, feeling dizzy and winded and real, and pulls Robin with her. 

Steve sits down heavily beside them, breathing hard and looking equally as happy. Jonathan rolls his eyes at all of them, but sits down next to Steve anyway, sifting through the records beside them. 

Finally, Jonathan sets a Prince record on the turntable and sets the needle down in the middle, smiling when Steve groans in frustration. 

“What, you don’t like Prince?” Nancy asks, a little amused. 

“I’m sure he’s a nice guy, but his music is, like. . . super weird,” Steve says, laughing breathlessly when Jonathan swats him with the cover of the record. 

“Well if you hate it that much, just come help me make some popcorn instead,” Jonathan tells Steve, rolling his eyes like he’s dealing with a kid. 

Steve smiles at him, all soft-eyed in the lamplight, and they grasp hands as they get up. 

“Microwave two bags so there’s enough for all of us!” Robin shouts as they leave the room. “Last time, Steve hogged all of it and ate, like, a full bag,” she tells Nancy by way of explanation. 

“Typical,” Nancy says, and Robin laughs, even though it wasn’t that funny. 

The song changes, and “I Would Die 4 U” comes on. Nancy likes this one-- it reminds her of lying in bed two years ago, listening to her radio and paging through a magazine or a book she was supposed to read for school but couldn’t really focus on. November of that year had been hard, a little after the second go-round with the Upside Down and the anniversary of the first, and the song had just come out. It calmed her, a little, all synth and easy melodies and repetition. It felt safe, predictable. 

Robin must like it, too, because she’s mouthing the lyrics a little, bobbing her head to the beat. Her eyes are closed, and Nancy wants to reach out, to-- she doesn’t know what. To do something. 

When the song reaches the chorus, Robin’s eyes snap open. She looks a little flushed, or maybe it’s just the lighting, or maybe Nancy’s finally lost it. 

“Nancy,” she says, barely audible over the music. Nancy can hear Steve and Jonathan arguing over whether or not to make a third bag of popcorn in the kitchen. 

“Yeah?”

Robin sighs a little, looking down like she’s embarrassed. “I think. . . I need to tell you something.”

Nancy’s heart skips a beat. “Okay.”

“But it can’t be here,” Robin says, getting to her feet and extending a hand to help Nancy up. She takes it, and the electric thrill shoots all the way up her arm. 

“Okay,” Nancy says again, nodding as Robin leads her out of the room and “Baby I’m A Star” starts playing. They pass Steve and Jonathan in the kitchen; they’re pouring the popcorn into two bowls, flicking the unpopped kernels at each other and giggling like little kids. 

“We’ll just be a minute, guys,” Robin says, and Steve flashes her a thumbs-up, winking exaggeratedly. Nancy smiles at him, a little confused and trying to ignore the implications of whatever that was. 

She lets Robin drag her outside, trying to calm her jittery nerves as the Byers’ front door swings shut behind them. It’s freezing outside, and Robin kind of hops around, trying to warm herself up. Nancy exhales shakily. She can see her breath cloud in front of her. 

“So,” Robin says, looking down at her feet, “I. . . I don’t want this to ruin anything between us, y’know, because you’re Jonathan’s best friend and Steve adores you, and. . . and I like being your friend, too. I think we can call ourselves friends by now, right?”

“Yeah,” Nancy breathes, nodding. She feels her pulse spike when Robin blushes. The porch light is on, illuminating her in the darkness. She looks almost manic, all jumpy and wild-eyed and flustered. 

“Yeah. Yeah, okay. So, here’s the thing,” Robin says, all in a rush. She squeezes her eyes shut, and Nancy feels her heart skip a beat again. “I think. . . I think I might like you as more than just a friend.”

There’s a beat of silence. Nancy feels a little like Robin’s slapped her. 

Robin’s eyes snap open, and she steps back a little, looking scared. “I mean, it doesn’t have to change anything, really, I-- I know you’re probably straight, and I would never try to, like, change you or anything, or make you like me, and if this is weird I’m really--”

“No,” Nancy says abruptly, a little surprised at how loud her voice sounds, “No, no, it’s not weird. It’s-- are you being serious?”

Robin huffs out a little laugh, blinking like she’s trying to figure Nancy out. “Yes, I’m being-- why would I lie to you about this? Christ, Wheeler, you’re gonna send me into cardiac arrest or something.”

Nancy giggles, and Robin looks at her a little incredulously. "Sorry, sorry, I just-- I had no idea you felt the same way. I. . . God, Robin, you’re all I’ve been able to think about lately.”

Robin looks floored, and Nancy finds herself wishing she had a picture of it-- Robin all wide-eyed, hugging herself in the cold, sucking in a breath. 

“Wow.”

“Yeah,” Nancy says, still laughing, because suddenly the whole situation is so bizarrely funny that she can’t do anything else. She’d agonized over this for weeks, terrified that she was either kind of homophobic or in love with a girl that didn’t even really like her, and here Robin was the whole time, feeling the same way. Liking Nancy back, and saying nothing about it. 

“So, wait,” Robin says, shaking her head a little, “is this what that thing was about last night? Your whole breakdown, that was--?”

Jesus Christ. Nancy nods, still laughing, and says, “Yeah. Yeah, I was. . . I had it-- have it-- bad for you, and I just. . . it freaked me out a little, for a minute. Or, not liking you, but. . . the idea that I’m. . . that I like girls.”

Robin’s face softens, and she steps towards Nancy a little. “Hey, I get it,” she tells her. “It used to scare me, too, back before. . . before I got kicked out. And, if you need time to process everything, we don’t have to rush into anything. Seriously.”

She looks impossibly small in the vastness of the dark, even though she’s about a head taller than Nancy. 

“I. . . I mean, sure. Yeah. I just need time, I think,” Nancy sighs. “To figure myself out. My dad isn’t really okay with gay people, y’know, and. . . I think Mike might like Will. It’s just scary, the thought of Dad figuring it out. Kicking us both out.”

Robin nods vehemently, and Nancy feels her heart swell with warmth despite the chill in the air. “Of course, that’s completely fine. I get it. Take as much time as you need, Nance.”

“Thank you.” Nancy smiles at her, lets her gaze linger. Robin is beautiful. It feels so great to be able to look at her without the guilt creeping in. 

“Well,” Robin says after a second. She’s been looking at Nancy, too, like they’re both finally allowing themselves to take each other in. “Wanna go inside? Steve’ll probably eat all the goddamn popcorn if we don’t.”

Nancy laughs-- a real one, tilting her head back and letting the feeling bubble up in her chest. She feels so much lighter. Robin beams at her, all doe-eyed under the porch light, and goes to open the door for her. 

After they sneak past Hopper, who’s half-asleep on the couch, El corners them in the hall leading to Steve and Robin’s room. She’s still bright-eyed and fully awake, and Nancy can hear The Clash playing in Will’s room. They’ve probably been up talking; they do that a lot now, Steve’s told her. Sometimes he’ll wake up in the middle of the night and hear them giggling in Will’s room on his way to get a glass of water. 

Now, El narrows her eyes at them a little like she’s trying to figure them out. 

“Why were you. . . outside?”

Robin grins at Nancy, steps forward and ruffles El’s hair just to watch her scramble to fix it. “None of your business, kiddo. Now scram, we’ve got some popcorn to finish off.”

El sighs at them, because she’s endlessly curious and needs to know the reason behind everything, but lets them pass anyway. Robin giggles in Nancy’s ear as they burst back into her room. The sound is bright and fills Nancy with this manic excitement she’s never felt around Steve or Jonathan before. 

“So,” Steve says by way of greeting, eyeing them suspiciously, “did you losers finally sort out your big gay crisis?”

“Dingus!” Robin shouts, half-annoyed and half-fond. Nancy just laughs, feeling lighter than ever. Jonathan beams at her. 

“I guess that’s a yes, then,” he says, batting Steve’s hand away from the pile of records next to them. Nancy guesses he’s taken over use of the record player again; The Psychedelic Furs is floating through the room, making everything feel enhanced, heightened. 

“Yep,” Nancy says, plopping down beside Jonathan and pulling Robin with her. 

“Nance still has some stuff to sort through, but. . . we’re gonna make it work, right?” Robin says, smiling brightly. Nancy nods, mirroring her. 

“Yeah. Yeah, we’re gonna take things slow.” They’re still holding hands. The point of contact is making Nancy buzz with giddiness. 

Steve is watching them with the softest expression, like he’s proud of both of them, and it makes something catch in Nancy’s chest. Jonathan nudges her with his elbow; when she looks over at him, he’s grinning. 

The song changes, and they all just sit there, smiling like idiots at each other. Nancy feels like she’s finally rooted in her body, like the glass sheet has been shattered. Robin squeezes her hand, and she squeezes back, and even though the worries about her dad and Mike are still hovering on the periphery of her mind, they seem tiny and unimportant and a little ridiculous in the cozy circle of people Nancy’s enveloped in, like the cover of Nightmare on Elm Street. After everything she’s gone through, coming to terms with herself feels like something she can handle. 

When she looks at Robin, really lets herself look, she’s already smiling at Nancy. 

\---

The Mike-and-Will conundrum is getting a little bit ridiculous. 

It’s been two weeks since Nancy and Robin’s mutual confessions, and they’ve been hanging out more and more without Steve and Jonathan. It was something simple they both agreed to; just being around each other more wasn’t inherently romantic, and it was fun, getting to go to the drive-in without the kids all talking over each other in the backseat, or spending the night in Nancy’s bedroom, sprawled over the floor listening to Stevie Nicks (because she’s awesome, Nancy has to admit-- Jonathan really is an elitist) or painting each other’s nails crazy colors. Robin likes to do weird alternating shades, painting Nancy’s fingernails red and pink, or plum and electric green, or dark-blue and mango; Nancy goes for softer looks on Robin (pastel pink, glittery lavender, pale yellow) because she knows looking prissy drives her nuts. 

Tonight, though, they’re hanging with the kids, Steve, and Jonathan in Nancy’s basement. She used to come down here a lot, back before high school and Steve all the Upside Down shit. It hasn’t changed much, but it’s a little messier-- chip bags litter the floor, Will and Mike’s comics are strewn around the room, and Nancy thinks the kids have started leaving some of their school stuff here, because Mike isn’t in AP Bio, but there are two textbooks for the class stacked on top of each other in the far corner, like Dustin and Max had decided they didn’t need to do the readings. 

The kids are already yelling over each other, all giddy with excitement about whatever campaign they’re playing tonight. Nancy still doesn’t really remember how the game is played, and she feels a little guilty about it-- she used to do this with them all the time, back when it was just Mike and WIll and Dustin and Lucas. She’d abandon her homework and follow them down the stairs with snacks piled into her arms, laughing at something dumb one of them said or complimenting Mike on the campaign storyline. That version of herself feels far away, though, and Nancy thinks that her present-time self is much more well-adjusted. 

“Steve, you have to do the voices again,” Will is saying, and Steve sighs a little from his spot on the couch, half-annoyed and half-fond. 

“Go on, Dingus,” Robin says, smiling at him across the room. She’s sitting with the kids around the table, sandwiched between Dustin and El, because she made the mistake of telling the kids she used to play D&D in middle school and now they’ve forced her to be an “honorary Party member”, as Max and El put it. She doesn’t look upset about it, though-- she’s laughing with all of the kids, muttering something to Dustin about Steve. The kid cackles, throws his head back as Mike glowers at everyone but Will. Nancy thinks he’s ready to start the game already-- he’s fidgeting around in his seat, muttering under his breath. 

Finally, Steve pulls himself to his feet and joins the kids around the table, leaving Nancy and Jonathan on the couch. They scoot closer together, Nancy letting her head fall onto his shoulder. She likes being able to be close to him without the pressures of a relationship being attached, and she thinks he does, too, because he puts his arm around her and smiles.

Robin sees, grins a little at Nancy across the room. “Get your hands off my lady friend, Byers,” she says, not really registering what she’s done until all the kids go dead quiet. 

Shit. 

“Wait, what?” Max says, laughing a little. 

Steve clears his throat loudly, clapping his hands. “Alright, shitheads, let’s do this. Mike, what’s the campaign?”

“No, shut up, Steve,” Dustin says, holding a finger up like he’s working something out. 

Nancy wants to sink into the floor. Or laugh. She can’t decide which. 

“No, YOU shut up,” Steve says, a little annoyed now. Robin snickers, sending Nancy an apologetic look. 

“Hey, idiots, can we circle back to what the hell Robin just said?” Lucas asks. 

“Yeah, are Robin and Nancy dating?” Max asks, all bright-eyed. El looks up from the cereal she’s eating, suddenly interested, and the rest of the kids look from Robin to Nancy like they’re trying to solve a puzzle. 

Mike looks a little shocked, glancing between Robin and Nancy like he’s seeing them clearly for the first time. 

“That’s none of your damn business, dipshits,” Steve says, scoffing at them. Robin sighs. 

“That means yes!” Max says, bouncing in her seat a little. El brightens, too, watching her with a soft expression. 

“Wait, seriously?” asks Will. “Is that why you guys have been hanging out without us?”

Steve looks pissed, Robin’s looking helplessly at him, and Jonathan’s twisting his hands in his lap, all nervous, and Nancy has had enough. 

“Fine! Yes, okay! We’re. . . we like each other,” she says breathlessly, and Robin jerks her head towards her, eyes wide. Nancy panics briefly that Robin didn’t want the kids to know just yet, but then she grins, and blushes, and the kids break into four different lines of questioning. 

“Since WHEN?!” yells Mike, flinching when Steve chucks a Dorito at him across the table. 

“Yeah, when did it start?” Dustin’s asking, suddenly interested. 

“Forget when,” Max tells them. “How?!”

“Who confessed first?” Lucas asks, scowling when El interrupts him: “No, no, where do you go on dates? Max and I need a new place to hang out, just us!”

“Shitheads!” Steve exclaims, ending the interrogation. He’s laughing now, looking a little less irate now that Robin and Nancy are both smiling. “Let Nance and Robs breathe a little. Damn.”

“Sorry,” El says, and the rest of the kids mutter apologies, looking a little embarrassed. Jonathan puts his arm back around Nancy, and she settles into him. 

After a minute, things go back to normal, all the kids chattering away as Mike rolls his eyes at them and tries to explain the campaign to Steve, who looks a little lost but still enthusiastic enough to make it through. Robin smiles at him, flicks her snack wrapper at his face. Nancy feels impossibly lucky.

The kids settle into the rhythm of their game quickly, laughing when Steve does the voices for the guards and ogres and background characters, screaming when Max rolls the ten-sided dice and it goes flying across the room, and cheering when it lands on the number they all want, over and over again. It makes Nancy’s chest fill with warmth, watching them all explode back into the kid versions of themselves. They want Steve and Robin to think they’re mature, so a lot of the time they’re stone-faced and a little snappy, but when they play games like this, and watch movies together, and have sleepovers at the Byers’, it’s like they’re all twelve again. 

When the kids finally wind down and decide to take a snack break, Steve and Robin extract themselves from the huddle and shove their way onto the couch, Steve leaning into Jonahtan’s side and folding Robin into a half-hug beside him. She smiles and grabs Nancy’s hand across both of them. 

“Wait, so Nancy and Robin being together means Dustin and I are the only single people left in the group,” Lucas is saying as the kids clamber back down into the basement with snacks piled in their arms. El’s holding a box of uncooked Eggos, Will’s got a box of cereal hefted in his arms, Dustin’s carrying several bags of chips, Max and Mike are carrying cans of soda for everyone, and Lucas is bringing up the rear with a tin of cookies. A fleeting image of Nancy’s mother yelling about the empty pantry flashes through her mind. 

“Wait, what?” Mike sputters, looking red in the face. Dustin laughs.

“C’mon, man, you and Will aren’t fooling any of us.”

It goes kind of quiet, then, and Nancy tenses up. Feels Robin and Jonathan do the same. Steve’s glancing between all the kids rapidly, trying to look casual and failing miserably. 

Will laughs nervously after a second, and the tension only thickens. 

The kids kind of disperse, Max pulling El back to the table. They sit back down beside each other, watching Mike and Will with growing concern. Dustin and Lucas follow them, but Mike lingers by the stairs, Will a few feet away, kind of wringing his hands. The sight makes Nancy’s heart ache.

“Guys,” Steve says after a moment, looking at Mike and Will with this gentle expression Nancy’s only ever seen a couple of times. “It’s okay. You. . . you know we all love you two. No matter what.”

Max nods, staring straight at Mike across the room. Nancy’s throat tightens. They’ve gotten closer recently, her brother and Max-- sometimes, when Steve doesn’t answer his walkie late at night, she comes knocking on Mike’s bedroom window with a black eye or cigarette burns on her wrists, and he’ll let her inside and call Nancy into the bathroom asking where the antiseptic is. Nancy always reminds him that it’s under the sink, and she doesn’t say anything when she hears them in his bedroom talking later. They still act like they hate each other when they’re with the rest of the kids, because they’re both stubborn as hell, but she knows they don’t. Not really. 

Mike sighs heavily, runs his hands through his hair, looks at Will with an unspoken question on his face. 

Will nods, almost imperceptibly, and Mike seems to relax a little. 

“Fine,” he says, grabbing Will’s hand. “We. . . we’re not calling it anything yet, but we got together a while ago. And we wanted to tell you, all of you--” he pauses here, looks at Nancy, and she feels her eyes well up, “--but we were scared. As stupid as it sounds.”

Steve shifts on the couch, and then he beckons the kids over, and Mike and Will kind of rush over, falling into the hug. Nancy’s a little shocked-- Mike doesn’t even hug her anymore. 

“You are NOT stupid,” El says emphatically, and Max turns and smiles at her with shining eyes, and then Will is laughing and Mike is laughing and the tension seems to drain out of the room. 

El gets up first, tugging Max with her, and they scramble over to Steve and join the hug, Dustin and Lucas following until Mike and Will are basically trapped in the middle of everyone. Jonathan reaches out and ruffles Will’s hair, smiling broadly, and Dustin goes, “Damn. Me and Lucas ARE the only single ones,” and Steve barks out a laugh into El’s hair, and she giggles, and everyone’s laughing again, and Nancy looks at them and feels something light and warm and comforting settle over her, like the yellow blanket Robin and Steve always fight over. 

She thinks, watching everyone and wanting a picture of all of them again, that she should definitely start coming down to the basement more often. 

\---

When Joyce calls them all to the kitchen for dinner later that night, Robin grabs Nancy’s hand. 

They keep holding hands under the kitchen table all throughout Dustin’s excited rambling about the copy of The Outsiders he picked up from the library, Steve and Jonathan’s half-argument, half-flirting session about Steve’s music taste, Joyce’s plans for her and Hopper’s next date night (at which point Will rolls his eyes and mutters, ‘gross’), and El’s declaration of love for the meatloaf Joyce has supposedly cooked. Jonathan swears on his life that it’s takeout from the soul food place that just opened a couple of blocks over, and Steve tells him it’s impolite to doubt his own mother’s cooking skills.

Nancy feels like she finally fits in with this little family. 

It wasn’t that she felt distanced, before, not really-- Jonathan invited her over a lot, and Steve and Robin always seemed happy to have her around, but now the kids are watching her with a renewed sense of interest. It makes her feel a little like she’s floating, the way El keeps glancing at her with this tiny, secret smile; Mike’s numerous attempts to drag her into his side-conversation with Lucas about their AP Geography class, which Nancy took in her freshman year; the way Max’s face lights up every time Nancy cuts in with a story about Mike or Steve or Jonathan. She feels whole, like maybe part of her was always on the outside looking in on their little world, wishing she was more involved.

And it’s not because she’s sort-of dating Robin, Nancy knows-- sure, the kids seemed excited about that, but they seemed even more thrilled that she’d shared the secret with them. Before dinner, Mike grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her into this bone-crushing hug as the rest of the kids scrambled around them and up the stairs. ‘I’m really proud of you, jerk,’ he said. Max met Nancy’s eyes over his shoulder and shot her a thumbs-up, El clinging to her side and beaming. 

Nancy’s lost track of the main conversation, now, and she guesses it doesn’t really matter because the kids have all retired to the living room to pick out a movie, anyway. Will and Mike are kind of cuddled up together on the couch, and El and Max are huddled beside them, talking emphatically about some movie Nancy’s never seen before. Dustin and Lucas are sprawled out on the floor in front of the Byers’ TV, rummaging through the mess of tapes they’ve dumped out of Robin’s bag onto the floor. She smuggles them scary movies from Family Video, sometimes, because she’s a menace and Keith turns a blind eye to any trouble she causes. If he fires her, Robin says, he’ll just be stuck with Steve, but it’ll be worse because Steve will miss Robin and will probably raise hell about it until Keith murders him in a fiery rage. Robin has a big imagination, Nany’s learning. 

“Mom,” Jonathan is saying, grinning when Steve flicks a carrot stick at him from across the table, “how do you feel about having eight homosexuals in your house at once?” 

Robin chokes on her water, and buries her face in Nancy’s shoulder to keep from laughing. Nancy kind of rolls her eyes, because it’s just like Jonathan to make a stupid joke to fill the silence without really thinking about it first. 

He seems to realize what he’s done, and shoots a quick apologetic glance at her across the table. She just smiles back at him, tries to tell him it’s okay with her eyes. 

Nancy’s alright with Joyce knowing-- she knows about Robin, and Steve and Jonathan, and Nancy’s pretty sure she knows about Will and Mike. 

Joyce’s eyes widen, and she looks at Jonathan a little disbelievingly. 

“Honey, I don’t think there are quite that many.” 

Steve loses it at that, burying his face in Jonathan’s shoulder, his whole body shaking with his laughter, and Robin rolls her eyes at his dramatics. 

“Let’s see,” Will says from the couch, smiling jokingly as Mike pinches the bridge of his nose like he already knows what utter bullshit is about to go down. “There’s Jonathan, Steve--”

“I’m bisexual, actually,” Steve cuts in, still laughing. 

“Robin,” Will continues, pointing at all of them one by one as Joyce starts to laugh. “Me, Mike, El, Max, and Nancy. That’s eight. Wait, Nancy, was it okay that I said that?” 

Nancy sighs, smiling a little. “Well, one of you was bound to say something sooner or later.”

Will sighs in relief from the living room, and Mike half-glares at him, blushing.

“I like boys, too,” Max reminds everyone. Steve pumps his fist in solidarity from the kitchen table, and Jonathan rolls his eyes. “But only sometimes. And I have VERY high standards.”

“She does,” El says, nodding sagely. 

“No wonder you and Lucas didn’t work out,” Dustin laughs, and Lucas whacks him on the shoulder with the D&D manual they left on the coffee table as El and Max snicker. 

Joyce pauses, her gaze flickering over to Nancy and Robin as Steve wiggles his eyebrows suggestively at them across the table. Robin kicks him in the shin, fiercely, and he jolts in his seat and glares halfheartedly at her. 

“Wait,” Joyce says, gesturing at Nancy and Robin kind of manically, “don’t tell me you two are together, too.”

Nancy shrugs at Robin, like, ‘go for it’, because Joyce is looking at them with a warmth she’s never been subjected to before and she feels safe and at home surrounded by Steve and Jonathan and the kids. 

“Yep,” Robin nods, her face splitting into this beaming smile, and Nancy wants to kiss her then and there. 

Joyce smiles back at her, all motherly love and unflinching support. “Well,” she says, “that worked out pretty perfectly, didn’t it.” 

“Took them a long time to get their shit together, but yeah,” Steve says, smiling so bright at the both of them that Nancy almost gets choked up.  
She looks back at the kids as they settle back into their little side-conversations, Dustin and Lucas arguing over which movie to watch as Mike and Will and Max and El all dive into a back-and-forth about whether or not Nancy would be Cherry or Marcia in The Outsiders. 

“Cherry’s a badass,” Max is saying, “and so is Nancy. She still has the gun, y’know-- the one she shot the demogorgons with?”

“Yeah, and Marcia was boring, anyway,” Mike adds. “Nancy’s. . . not. At least, not all the time.”

It stirs up something warm in Nancy’s chest, something bright and overflowing that makes her squeeze Robin’s hand tighter and lean her head on her shoulder as Joyce starts a record in the corner and ‘Uptown Girl’ starts up again. It makes her smile when Jonathan bangs his head on the table and Steve laughs and covers Jonathan’s ears for him. It makes her turn in her seat and tell the kids to pick a movie, already, because she’s excited to watch whatever they choose, and Nancy’s positive, when they all smile at her and scramble to pick a tape, that the glass sheet is utterly and totally shattered.


End file.
